Thursday, March 16, 2017

POLICE

A police
force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the
law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the
legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police
services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power
of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility.
Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other
organizations involved in the defence of the state against foreign aggressors;
however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.

Law enforcement,
however, constitutes only part of policing activity. Policing has included an
array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are
concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the
class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer
from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is
usually a public-sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.

As police
are often interacting with individuals, slang terms are numerous. Many slang
terms for police officers are decades or centuries old with lost etymology. One
of the oldest, "cop," has largely lost its slang connotations and
become a common colloquial term used both by the public and police officers to
refer to their profession.

Etymology

First
attested in English in the early 15th century, initially in a range of senses
encompassing '(public) policy; state; public order', the word police come from
Middle French police ('public order, administration, government'), in turn from
Latin politia, which is the Latinisation of the Greek πολιτεία (politeia),
"citizenship, administration, civil polity". This is derived from
πόλις (polis), "city".